Month: May 2017

I found this roll a while back not knowing what’s in it, what camera did I shoot with it and importantly what iso I used. Took me a few week to decide that having it developed a little longer would be the safest.

So welcome back to Bangkok! And welcome to Chao Mae Tuptim shrine A.K.A the Penis Shrine.

The caretaker told us that they just removed half of the penises in the shrine as they were getting a bit crowded. People having fertility issue would leave behind a phallic candle or idol to make their wish come true. It is said that if you touched the phallus it would bring good luck and fertility. I did touched some of the phallus (no homo) hoping it would bring us luck. You can find elephant figures, creepy doll dresses ( I don’t know what they are for) and crammed to every crook and cranny are penises!

See what I mean by creepy. This just gives me the heebeegeebees!

This is my favorite shot I got from the shrine. I haven’t read yet “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson” But this reminds me of that book. I like how the penis is just proudly standing there.

What I love most in Thailand is the ambience of calm and unrushedness of the people. Look at him just chilling by the fountain even removing the shoes to be comfortable. Also Bangkok feels more spacious than Manila which is very very crowded.

Up next is the Banyan Tree sky bar. Being on a tight budget and just wanting to sightsee we just ordered drinks thankfully there’s free nuts. And what a great view it offered. I’m really regretting only bringing my 50mm to this trip.

Do me a favor and be smarter than me when you visit this place. See those railings? A great place to mount a gorrila pod and bring a wide angle lens or maybe a fish eye. Time it just right for sunset shots then order a few more drinks til it’s dark and the night light are on and get a great night shot of Bangkok. And not a plain boring shot like I did:

I think this is the phallus’s making. When the waiter brought our drinks he accidentally spilled one of the glass on our table. Lucky none of us got wet with it. As compensation they gave us another round for free and waived our bill. I hope that doesn’t come out of our waiters salary. Thank you Penis shrine I know that was because of you.

This would be the face of someone spending the last night in Bangkok eating like crazy Due to the saved money from Banyan Tree we had enough for a buffet. Thus the evil palm rubbing.

Thank you for all the memories and the good time Bangkok! Maybe Chang Mai next time.

Nothing brings you back to Manila more than someone in a diaper playing ball on a busy road.

Just hold on. We can slowly work together for a better future. By starting with ourselves. Let’s be the best possible version of ourself. And as always love and take the most meaningful photos to you.

When I started using film I had this idea/dream that every photos I would take would be the “SHIT”. Oh how right was I when the first roll got developed and printed. 35 shots of crap (under, overexposed and out of focused shots) and 1 decent photo. I blamed everything less but me. Maybe the camera is broken it’s old, maybe the meter is fried, maybe my film stock wasn’t handled well being developed yeah that’s it bad developing. But deep down I know it was my fault. So I did what any normal person would do before running a film thru a new camera: Read the manual. Ha! so it’s center weighted metering, that’s good to know.

Next thing I did was browse through the works of Josef Koudelka and learn from him. Ofcourse I admired Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Robert Frank and most of the greats but it’s with Josef Koudelka’s work I resonated with.

Great work takes time. Koudelka took around 5000 photos of the Prague 1968 invasion but used only a fraction of it. Only later when “Invasion 68:Prague” that other photos would be used, it featured 250 awe inducing photos most of them published for the first time. That’s 250 out 5000 photos! He had a tight body of work spanning all the years he was taking picture but the quality of it was absurd. So be patient and enjoy the learning process.

After shifting to film my compulsive behavior to shot 10 or more photo of the same thing completely disappeared and was replaced by extreme skimping. 1shot per 1 subject that’s all I gave myself. Only after looking at Koudelka’s contact sheet did I realized that if you feel there’s a “Shot”, you can work the scene out. Compose, recompose and shoot. Don’t skimp. Which made me think of this quote:

” In the end you only regret the the things you didn’t do”

Let’s rephrase this

” In the end you only regret the photos you didn’t take”

My favorite photo. Took me a bit of experimentation but I got it. When life seem dark always look to the light. I always look to you my light. I am grateful having you. Thank you and thanks for reading!